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POLICE

Malmö police report leadership for ‘incompetence’

Around 40 police officers from Malmö have submitted complaints to the force’s senior safety representative in Skåne charging police leadership for “weakness, incompetence, and bad planning” in its preparation preparation the weekend's demonstrations.

Malmö police report leadership for 'incompetence'

The frustration began a street party held Friday in conjunction with the European Social Forum in Malmö ended with stone throwing and vandalism.

According to the complaints, the police on the street were told to take off their protective helmets in instead wear their regular uniform hats, which meant that police leadership endangered officers, writes the Sydsvenskan newspaper.

The complaints relate to “a case of workplace injury” and will now be taken up by the senior safety official for the Skåne police, Kaj Svensson.

Chief Commander Håkan Jarborg-Eriksson told the newspaper that it isn’t the leadership which decides whether or not the helmets are removed. Rather, the decision is taken by the field commander on the scene.

The police had consciously chosen a wait-and-see approach during the European Social Forum.

Several officers wanted to do more than was authorized during Friday’s disturbances.

Jarborg-Eriksson theorizes that frustration related to the perceived lack of action taken by police may be the motivation behind the complaints.

POLICE

Denmark convicts man over bomb joke at airport

A Danish court on Thursday gave a two-month suspended prison sentence to a 31-year-old Swede for making a joke about a bomb at Copenhagen's airport this summer.

Denmark convicts man over bomb joke at airport

In late July, Pontus Wiklund, a handball coach who was accompanying his team to an international competition, said when asked by an airport agent that
a bag of balls he was checking in contained a bomb.

“We think you must have realised that it is more than likely that if you say the word ‘bomb’ in response to what you have in your bag, it will be perceived as a threat,” the judge told Wiklund, according to broadcaster TV2, which was present at the hearing.

The airport terminal was temporarily evacuated, and the coach arrested. He later apologised on his club’s website.

“I completely lost my judgement for a short time and made a joke about something you really shouldn’t joke about, especially in that place,” he said in a statement.

According to the public prosecutor, the fact that Wiklund was joking, as his lawyer noted, did not constitute a mitigating circumstance.

“This is not something we regard with humour in the Danish legal system,” prosecutor Christian Brynning Petersen told the court.

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